Fashion blogs: too trendy for libraries or useful resources?

Do your students look at blogs? Do you see them as information sources? Are they part of your library’s resources? This article summarises some recent research on fashion blogs, both ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, and their use in providing information to fashion students. It highlights the potential usefulness of subject blogs, based on points that arose from the data collected from fashion librarians and students in interviews, an online survey and a round-table discussion. Hopefully the results will encourage you to consider your own stance on blog information in the library, whichever subject you support

Reflections on using iSpring quizzes for Information Literacy training at Middlesex University

Reflections on choosing, designing and delivering Undergraduate Library Inductions and Information Literacy sessions using iSpring online quiz software

Hyperfine structure of antiprotonic helium revealed by a laser-microwave-laser resonance method

Using a newly developed laser-microwave-laser resonance method, we observed a pair of microwave transitions between hyperfine levels of the $(n,L)=(37,35)$ state of antiprotonic helium. This experiment confirms the quadruplet hyperfine structure due to the interaction of the antiproton orbital angular momentum, the electron spin and the antiproton spin as predicted by Bakalov and Korobov. The measured frequencies of $\nu_{\text HF}^+ =12.89596 \pm 0.00034$ GHz and $\nu_{\text HF}^- =12.92467 \pm 0.00029$ GHz agree with recent theoretical calculations on a level of $6 \times10^{-5}$.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Issues potentially affecting quality of life arising from long-term medicines use: a qualitative study

Background Polypharmacy is increasing and managing large number of medicines may create a burden for patients. Many patients have negative views of medicines and their use can adversely affect quality of life. No studies have specifically explored the impact of general long-term medicines use on quality of life. Objective To determine the issues which patients taking long-term medicines consider affect their day-to-day lives, including quality of life. Setting Four primary care general practices in North West England Methods Face-to-face interviews with adults living at home, prescribed four or more regular medicines for at least 1 year. Interviewees were identified from primary care medical records and purposively selected to ensure different types of medicines use. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results Twenty-one interviews were conducted and analysed. Patients used an average of 7.8 medicines, 51 % were preventive, 40 % for symptom relief and 9 % treatment. Eight themes emerged: relationships with health professionals, practicalities, information, efficacy, side effects, attitudes, impact and control. Ability to discuss medicines with health professionals varied and many views were coloured by negative experiences, mainly with doctors. All interviewees had developed routines for using multiple medicines, some requiring considerable effort. Few felt able to exert control over medicines routines specified by health professionals. Over half sought additional information about medicines whereas others avoided this, trusting in doctors to guide their medicines use. Patients recognised their inability to assess efficacy for many medicines, notably those used for prophylaxis. All were concerned about possible side effects and some had poor experiences of discussing concerns with doctors. Medicines led to restrictions on social activities and personal life to the extent that, for some, life can revolve around medicines. Conclusion There is a multiplicity and complexity of issues surrounding medicines use, which impact on day-to-day lives for patients with long-term conditions. While most patients adapt to long-term medicines use, others did so at some cost to their quality of life

Postpartum opportunistic advice in primary care for women who have had gestational diabetes: a qualitative study of health care professionals' views

Background Women who have had gestational diabetes during pregnancy are at very high risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life, but their understanding of the risks is often limited. In this study we explored the views of health care professionals regarding offering brief opportunistic advice to women after their pregnancy, during unrelated consultations in primary care, relating to reducing diabetes risk. Methods The study took place in three Health Boards in Scotland. We conducted semi-structured one-to-one interviews (either face-to-face or telephone) with two health visitors, three practice nurses, two GPs, two diabetes consultants and two obstetricians. A focus group with five health visitors was also held. A topic guide was followed, covering the feasibility and acceptability of delivering brief opportunistic advice during a routine consultation, the optimal way to identify and recall women with previous gestational diabetes, and the possible content and timing of any such intervention. A thematic approach was used to analyse the qualitative data generated. Results The interviews/discussion lasted from 15 to 51 min. There was widespread support from all participants for offering opportunistic advice, and general consensus that health visitors would be best placed to do this as part of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway in Scotland. Thematic analysis generated three significant points of discussion: implications for training of health visitors, the need for a systematic approach to identifying women with gestational diabetes, and the optimal timing of delivery. Despite an already demanding schedule of providing advice and education to women, health visitors were confident that they could offer educational advice, provided that they received appropriate training to do so. However, there would need to be a watertight system for identifying women in their care who had had gestational diabetes. In terms of timing, later visits around 6–8 months after delivery were considered most suitable. Conclusions There is support from health care professionals, and most pertinently from health visitors, that the frequency of routine visits with women during the Universal Health Visiting Pathway programme in Scotland provides potential opportunities for education around future diabetes risk to women who have had gestational diabetes

Perception of Symmetries in Drawings of Graphs

Symmetry is an important factor in human perception in general, as well as in the visualization of graphs in particular. There are three main types of symmetry: reflective, translational, and rotational. We report the results of a human subjects experiment to determine what types of symmetries are more salient in drawings of graphs. We found statistically significant evidence that vertical reflective symmetry is the most dominant (when selecting among vertical reflective, horizontal reflective, and translational). We also found statistically significant evidence that rotational symmetry is affected by the number of radial axes (the more, the better), with a notable exception at four axes.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

El proyecto genómico del hongo Ophiostoma

The Canadian Ophiostoma Genome Project, which was initiated in 2001, is a collaborative effort between research teams in four different universities. Its general objective is to conduct a large-scale identification and analysis of genes controlling important aspects of the life cycle of Ophiostomatoid fungi. To this end, several expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries were obtained for the Dutch elm disease pathogen Ophiostoma novo-ulmi and the sapstainer O. piceae, following partial, single-pass automated sequencing of complementary DNA clones. The largest EST library, prepared from yeast like cells of O. novo-ulmi grown at 24 °C, contains over 3,400 readable sequences and serves as a general reference library for Ophiostomatoid fungi. Smaller, specific EST libraries were constructed from mycelia of O. novo-ulmi grown at suboptimal temperatures, from perithecia formed in laboratory crosses, as well as from O. piceae grown on different carbon sources. Ongoing bioinformatic searches in public databases have so far identified over 750 Ophiostoma unique ESTs which show significant homology with other fungal genes of known function, although a high proportion of Ophiostoma ESTs are either orphans (no match to any known gene) or show homology to genes of unknown function. In addition to EST analysis, differential expression of selected genes and structural genomics are also being studied.El programa canadiense sobre el genoma de Ophiostoma, iniciado en 2001, es una colaboración entre equipos de investigación de cuatro universidades diferentes. Su objetivo general es el desarrollo de la identificación y análisis a gran escala de los genes que controlan algunos aspectos importantes del ciclo vital de los hongos de Ophiostoma. Con este fin, se ha obtenido diversas bibliotecas de marcadores de secuencias expresadas (bibliotecas EST) para la el patógeno de la grafiosis Ophiostoma novo-ulmi y para el hongo de tinción vascular O. piceae, seguido de una secuenciación automática parcial de un único paso de clones complementarios de ADN. La mayor biblioteca EST, preparada a partir de conidios de O. novo-ulmi cultivadas a 24 ºC, contiene más de 3.400 secuencias legíbles, y sirve como biblioteca de referencia para los hongos de Ophiostoma. Se han desarrollado bibliotecas específicas menores a partir de micelios de O. novo-ulmi cultivados a temperaturas sub-óptimas, a partir de los peritecios formados en cruces realizados en laboratorio, así como a partir de O. piceae cultivado en distintas fuentes de carbón. Las búsquedas bioinformáticas en bases de datos públicas han permitido identificar hasta ahora más de 750 EST exclusivos de Ophiostoma, lo que muestra una significativa homología con otros genes fúngicos de función conocida, aunque una alta proporción de los EST de Ophiostoma son o bien huérfanos (no relacionados con ningún gen conocido), o bien muestran homología con genes cuya función es desconocida. Además del análisis EST, la expresión diferencial de genes seleccionados y la estructura genómica están siendo también estudiadas